Catalogue > At random

The video boldly combines and juxtaposes two distinctive spatial settings—a church and a queer club. For this filmic work, two choreographers and two dancers were paired up to create a new choreography, for the church “Kirche am Südstern” and the queer club “SchwuZ” in Berlin respectively. Each pair was assigned to a different Bach piano piece for four hands. After days of rehearsals and when the choreography was complete, their designated venues were then swapped. The participants did not know the exact location they would perform in until the actual day of filming, and, therefore, they had to reprogram their choreographies according to the new architectural features and atmosphere of the changed location. Although churches and queer clubs seem to function for starkly different purposes, both spaces share intriguing similarities as they both require specific rituals, behavioral norms and attitudes closely linked to the space and its role. In the film, the continuous change of scenes between the two kind of spaces with the dancer’s bodily presence, their movements and dialogues, aims at achieving a sort of almost impossible mergence or coexistence of religious practice on one side and club culture on the other side.

Young-jun Tak (born in 1989 in Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. His solo exhibition took place at SOX (Berlin, 2022) and Fragment Gallery (Moscow, 2021). His works have been exhibited at the 9th Berlin Masters (2021), Gabriele Senn Galerie (2021, Vienna), the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), Hall Art Foundation / Schloss Derneburg Museum (2020), Diskurs Berlin (2019), Seoul Museum of Art, SeMA Bunker (2019), Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam (2018), PS120 (2018, Berlin), the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017), König Galerie (2016, Berlin) among others. He won “TOY Berlin Masters Award” (2021) and grants for International Exchange Program from Arts Council Korea (2021, 2020, 2017, 2016). He was Managing Editor for the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021) and the 9th Busan Biennale (2019), and Editor for the South Korean monthly art magazine "Art in Culture" (2021–2015).